U.S.|Marilyn Mosby, Prosecutor in Freddie Gray Case, Takes a Stand and Calms a Troubled City

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Marilyn Mosby, Prosecutor in Freddie Gray Case, Takes a Stand and Calms a Troubled City

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Marilyn J. Mosby, the state’s attorney for Baltimore, said that Freddie Gray’s arrest was illegal and that there was probable cause to file manslaughter charges against the police officers involved.CreditCreditGabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

BALTIMORE — Shortly before she became the youngest top prosecutor in any major American city, Marilyn J. Mosby, a daughter and granddaughter of police officers, had tough words about how the nation’s criminal justice system had handled mistreatment of black men by the police.

“It’s been 78 days since Michael Brown was shot in the street by a police officer,” Ms. Mosby said in October at her alma mater, Tuskegee University in Alabama. “It’s been 101 days since Eric Garner was choked to death in New York by a police officer, and 54 days since the New York City medical examiner ruled that incident a homicide. Neither has resulted in an indictment.”

Friday morning, Ms. Mosby made clear that she intends to proceed at a different pace. Her stunning announcement that she would prosecute six officers in the death of Freddie Gray landed her squarely in the national spotlight, making her a heroine to those demanding better police treatment of black men, but drawing sharp criticism from critics who accuse her of pursuing a political agenda and who say she moved too quickly.

At 35, Ms. Mosby — whose official title is the Maryland state’s attorney for Baltimore City — has been shaped by her own experience growing up black in a tough part of town. As a student in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, she would awaken at 5 a.m. for an hourlong bus ride to attend school in a wealthy white suburb; she was the only black child there.

When she was 14, her cousin was mistaken for a drug dealer, and shot and killed on the doorstep of her home. As adults, she said in an interview, both she and her husband — Nick Mosby, a member of the Baltimore City Council — have learned what it feels like to be looked upon with suspicion by the police.

“I’ve had experiences as an African-American woman where I’ve been harassed by police, or my husband has been pulled over and harassed by police,” she said in an interview Friday in her office, near police headquarters in downtown Baltimore. “Does that give me a perspective? I think it does.”

Ms. Mosby’s turn in the spotlight comes after just four months on the job. She was elected in November, ousting the incumbent, Gregg L. Bernstein, after campaigning aggressively on a vow to prosecute police misconduct. Some of her backers, including Tawanda Jones, whose brother Tyrone West was killed after a violent scuffle with the police, were in tears after listening to her on Friday.

“I’m so excited, I can’t stop crying,” Ms. Jones said. “She gave us her word. I said, ‘How will you handle police brutality?’ She said, ‘If you put me in this chair, I don’t care if they are in uniform or not. I come from a family of officers. Some are good, some are bad, I will hold everybody accountable to the law.’ And thank you, Jesus, she lived it out.”

But critics accuse Ms. Mosby of playing politics and say she moved too fast, potentially jeopardizing her case. The swiftness with which she announced charges — less than two weeks after Mr. Gray died — stunned Baltimore and legal experts beyond the city, some of whom wondered if she was motivated by a desire to defuse a volatile situation.

“Think about how long it took in Ferguson to go through each and every piece,” said Ivan Bates, a former homicide prosecutor in Baltimore, referring to the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, in which Officer Darren Wilson did not face charges. “It’s easy to charge. It’s hard to convict.”

Mr. Gray’s death, from a spinal cord injury suffered while in police custody, opened a deep wound in Baltimore, a city with a black mayor and a black police commissioner — and a decades-old history of tensions between the police and black residents. After nearly two weeks of protests, a night of devastating looting and arson, the arrival of the National Guard — and more protests planned for this weekend — Ms. Mosby’s surprise announcement did seem to bring a palpable sense of relief.

“She probably saved the city from a lot of stress that it didn’t need to go through,” said A. Dwight Pettit, a supporter of Ms. Mosby and a lawyer who represents people who file misconduct cases against police officers.

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Marilyn J. Mosby announced on Friday that she would prosecute six Baltimore police officers in the death of Freddie Gray.CreditGabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

Among those sounding relieved was Representative Elijah E. Cummings, the Maryland Democrat who has been in the streets here late at night this week, working to keep the peace between angry demonstrators and the police. On Monday, before riots erupted in the city, Mr. Cummings gave an impassioned speech at Mr. Gray’s funeral, questioning whether anyone paid attention to young black men like Mr. Gray.

“I said, ‘Did you know him? Did you see him? Did anybody see this man who was a mother’s child? Did they see this man who was just trying to get through life? Did they see him as a human being?” the congressman said, reprising those remarks. “And I have come here today to thank God that Marilyn Mosby and her team saw him.”

But lest anyone think she lacks respect for the police, Ms. Mosby took pains to point out on Friday that her mother, father and grandfather were police officers. She has noted that her grandfather was a founding member of the first association of black police officers in Massachusetts. Despite that history, she said in the interview, she never seriously considered becoming a police officer herself.

After attending college at Tuskegee, where she met her future husband, and law school at Boston College, where she received her degree in 2005, she decided with Mr. Mosby to settle in Baltimore, where he grew up. It was less expensive than Boston; they bought a run-down house in Reservoir Hill, an especially gritty neighborhood.

“He points to a 20-year-old dilapidated vacant shell with no roof and a tree growing out of the middle of the ground, and he’s like, ‘This is where I want to live,’ ” she said, recounting their house-hunting excursion. “And I looked at the open-air drug market and the trash in the streets and the number of vacant houses on the street and I’m like, ‘You’re crazy.’ ”

She was a law clerk in the Baltimore prosecutor’s office before becoming an assistant state’s attorney in 2006; Mr. Pettit, who represented defendants whom she prosecuted, remembers her as tenacious and uncompromising. Once, he tried to get her to cut a plea deal with a client who, he argued, had acted in self-defense.

“I couldn’t seem to get her to give one inch of ground,” he said.

Ms. Mosby later spent about three years working as a lawyer for an insurance company, Liberty Mutual, before she was elected to the city prosecutor’s job last year. When she challenged Mr. Bernstein, who is white, in the Democratic primary, most people thought she would lose, and she was vastly outspent, Mr. Pettit said.

Sonia Kumar, a staff lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, said family members like Ms. Jones had a big part in turning out the vote.

“Her actions really told us who she is today,” Ms. Kumar said of Ms. Mosby. “For years and years, victims of police violence in our city, overwhelmingly black people, have sought justice for their loved ones to no avail. This is an historic moment.”

But Ms. Mosby’s critics, including Mr. Bates, say she lacks the necessary experience to prosecute a complex case like the Gray case. Gene Ryan, president of the Baltimore chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, accused Ms. Mosby of having conflicts of interest, including the fact that she has been supported politically by William H. Murphy Jr., the lawyer for Mr. Gray’s family. He also noted that her husband’s political future, like hers, could be affected by the case.

On Friday, Ms. Mosby dismissed out of hand suggestions she should recuse herself from the Gray case. “I uphold the laws. He makes the laws,” she said of her husband. “And I will prosecute any case within my jurisdiction.”

In the interview, Ms. Mosby said she has watched tensions build between citizens and the police over the years, and has been troubled by it. At her news conference on Friday, on the steps of Baltimore’s War Memorial, she made clear that the events of the past week have been very much on her mind.

“To the people of Baltimore and the demonstrators across America,” she said, “I heard your call for ‘no justice, no peace.’ ”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Rookie Prosecutor Takes a Stand and Surprises a Troubled City . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe